Ed, the almighty.
Lord of Laughs.
Sometimes, me and my dear friend Brunno Nunes (which is a great guitar player and has a great DS Early Years cover act at his hometown ) catch us talking about DK and Hal as, and only as, guitar players.
Hal is a pro-session guitar player until nowadays. Composed a bunch of film scores and recorded a lot of albums. David, was never a pro-player (in my opinion). However, he was capable to deliver the job until the date that he leaves the band.
Thru the 2 first DS albums, DK's guitar is very, very discrete. Both albums are essencially Mark playng guitar, like 90/10 in coparison to David.
To my ears, Hal was (is) very capable to mimic Mark's playing. However, his playing turned (i don't know if was because of Alan) very modest and far from his capacities as a guitar player (Hal can play, technically, much better than what we hear on the records)
I am laughing just imagining your answers.
Funny, as I already mentioned to you, dear friend Rolo, I attribute the same phenomenon to Hal's participation in the Love Over Gold album. I have a lot of difficulty in perceiving his signature, where he is present doing some filling, something that identifies, "this is Hal Lindes.", everything seems to be MK. In Private Dancer with Tina, I simply cannot identify any signature of Hal's, the only thing I see Hal copying MK is the tone and nothing more, they had copies of Schecter guitars, the same equipment, this helped him a lot in this sense, in addition to all the guidance that MK certainly gave him. A great professional guitarist, but, for me, he does not have a signature, something that I have always valued a lot, as well as beautiful soulful solos.
In the first two albums, despite the predominance of MK's guitars (in which album does this not happen in DS or solo?) I can more easily notice DK's guitar, which despite being a band with 4 members. In my opinion, DK naturally has elements that emulate guitar sounds more clearly. MK, there is a whole context behind this, they have the same influences, they created their own dynamics between guitars and equipment over years and years (forget the differences in personalities), I'm talking about sound, identity, the rhythmic parts that DK sound very similar to MK's, live it becomes clearer to me.
In the end, it is clear to me, regarding guitar sounds in DS, DK has more identity in what he set out to do, rhythm guitar, he had more expression in this and style than Hal, none of the songs on the first two albums sound like the original quartet and it's not because the next stage went to another level of dynamics because of the keyboards, it's just that when a member leaves, the sound can change a lot, it was like that with DK in 1980, it was like that when Pick left in 1982, but it wasn't like that with the absence of Hal Lindes in 1984.
If Bruce Welch's guitar was not in The Shadows would it be the same? I don't think so. It could be Brendan Croker or Steve Philippe instead of DK, but it wouldn't be the same. There are these nuances.
Just my point of view.
